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Show 84 LIBERTY AND SLAVERY. own."* Now, surely, if this representation be just, then the institution of slavery should be held in infinite abhorrence by every man in Christendom. Bnt we can assure Dr. Wayland that, however ignorant or heathenish he may be pleased to consider the people of the Southern States, we are not so utterly lost to all reverence for the Creator as to suppose, even for a moment, that he intended any one human being to possess the right of sacrificing the happiness of his fellow-men to his own. We can assure him that we are not quite so dead to every sentiment of political justice, as to imagine that any legislation which intends to benefit the one at the expense of the many is otherwise than unequal and iniquitous in the extreme. There is some little sense of justice left among us yet; and hence we approve of no institution or law which proceeds on the monstrous principle that any one man has, or can have, the "right to sacrifice the lLappiness of any number of other human beings for the purpose of promoting !tis own." We recognise no such right. It is as vehemently abhorred * Moral Science, Part ii. chap. i. sec. 2. ARGUMENTS OF ADOJ~ITIONISTS. 85 and condemned by us as it can be abhorred and condemned by the author himself. In tbus taking it for granted, as Dr. Wayland so coolly does, that the institution in question is " intended" to sacrifice the happiness of the slaves to the selfish interests of the master, he incontinently begs the whole question. Let him establish this point, imd tho whole controversy will be at an end. But let him not hope to establish any thing, or to satisfy any one, by assuming the very point in dispute, and tl;len proceed to demolish what every man at the South condemns no less than himself. Surely, no one who has lookccl at both sides of this great question can be ignorant that the legislation of the South proceeds on the principle that slavery is beneficial, not to the maBter only, but also and especially to the slave. Surely, no one who has either an eye or an car for facts can be ignorant that the institution of slavery is based on the ground, or principle, that it is beneficial, not only to the parts, but also to the whole, of the society in which it exists. This ground, or principle, is set forth in every defence of slavery by the writers and speaker. of the South; it is so clearly and so un-a |
